pal, one of the Kingsbury boys, and the 
old rabbit hound “Tige,” which Jesse 
Gleason owned and the whole town 
hunted. 
S208 two boys and “Tige” trudged 
over past the old tannery, then past 
the saw-mill, over the creek on the ice 
and into the woods, where we started 
“Tige” on a cotton-tail track, but he 
soon shifted to a bigger track, which 
we knew to be that of the so-called 
“snow-shoe rabbit,” and a few minutes 
later the dog started the big rabbit and 
went off up the creek and out of hear- 
ing. Children are not as 
patient as grown-ups, and 
after perhaps an hour of 
waiting we two decided 
“Tige”’ and his “snow- 
shoe” had gone out of the 
country, so we started for 
home, trudged over across 
an opening in the woods, 
maybe fifty yeards across 
it, and then we heard the 
hound coming back. He 
was tongueing fast, so we 
knew there was game 
ahead of him, and no 
sooner had we stopped to 
listen than out of the 
brush on the other side of 
that clearing bobbed a big 
white rabbit, and my first 
thought was that some 
one’s tame tabbit had got- 
ten over into the woods. 
Then it came over me that 
I was looking at a real 
wild one and that I had a 
gun and should shoot, so I 
aimed as well as an ex- 
cited boy could aim and 
pulled the front trigger. 
HERE was a roar, a 
cloud of black powder 
smoke, and a boy kicked 
flat on his back. Soon I 
was up, the smoke had 
drifted away, and over 
there I saw a white form 
laying on its side, doubling 
up and kicking out as does a rabbit 
when he is kicking his last; but to me 
that action meant that my rabbit might 
get up and run away, so I blazed away 
with my second barrel. The rabbit 
gradually became still; we picked him 
up and started for home, forgetting all 
about the faithful old hound, but 
“Tige” soon caught up with us, and 
our procession of three, two of us very 
proud and three of us very happy, 
tramped back to the village and up to 
Jim Haskin’s hotel and Fay Woodruff’s 
store to show our rabbit before we went 
home to show it to mother. 
I have owned many guns 
Page 135 
and 
INTO A NORTHERN SKY, THE VARYING 
hunted in many lands, but no gun has 
ever looked as good to me as did that 
old 8-lb. Ithaca. Not even did the bull 
moosé I once killed up in Quebec look 
as good to me as my first Snow-Shoe 
Rabbit. ; 
A Hare Raiser 
By DR: FRANK L. BAILEY 
WAS sitting at the supper table 
one Friday evening when Frank 
rushed in all out of breath. I could 
easily see by his ill-concealed emotion 

WHERE THE SOMBER SPIRES OF SPRUCE AND FIR REACH 
HARE 
HIS HOME 
that his mind was laboring under ter- 
rific excitement. Frank was fourteen, 
I a year older. “I’ve got a gun!” were 
the four magic words he whispered in 
my ear, as my grandmother stepped 
into the kitchen for another plate of 
biscuits. 
MY appetite vanished instantly. A 
gun! How we had longed, and 
planned, and fairly ached for just that 
particular kind of hardware. 
“It’s up under Stover’s fish-house,” 
continued Frank, feverishly, but I 
stopped him with a kick on the shin; 
my grandmother was returning with 
the biscuits. She eyed us a trifle sus- 
piciously, I’m afraid. Poor old grand- 
mother, we had “put one over” on her 
many times, and although she’s dead 
now these many years, I know we have 
been forgiven. 
SSUMING disarming expressions of 
innocence, we “guessed” that we’d 
take a little walk to settle our supper 
and maybe work our arithmetic out to- 
gether at Frank’s house—we usually 
put this off until the last thing Sunday 
night—we went out of doors. 
It was a dark night, but with the in- 
fallible instinct of two 
homing pigeons, we found 
Stover’s fish-house. Frank 
produced a lantern from 
somewhere, and lighting 
it, we entered. My com- 
panion pulled up a board 
in the floor and there lay 
the gun in all its rust (ic) 
beauty. He had scraped 
the barrel up some with 
sandpaper, and to me it 
was the most beautiful 
thing I had ever seen, and 
so we gazed in awed si- 
lence, drinking our fill. It 
was a single-barreled af- 
fair of the muzzle-loading 
type, about four feet in 
length, with an abnormal- 
ly large hammer and a 
painfully small stock—the 
painful part we were to 
learn of later. 
“What do you think of 
her?” Frank whispered. 
“She’s a dandy!” I re- 
plied, and I know my voice 
trembled. “Where’d you 
get her?” 
“Used to belong to Al 
Pinkham,” Frank informed 
me, lifting the gun from 
its resting place and hold- 
ing the weapon toward 
me. I sat down on a trawl 
tub and examined the an- 
cient arm. It was light 
and handled beautifully. 
“Some partridge gun!” I commented, 
putting it to my shoulder and swinging 
it from every angle. 
MAKES 
FRANK took it and tried all the dif- 
ferent swings, then handed it to me 
and, reaching into the depths of the 
flooring, produced a leather pouch of 
No. 4 shot, a Hood’s tooth powder bottle 
almost full of “Hazzard Sea Shooting’ 
black powder, a shiny brass box of per- 
cussion caps and a bunch of oakum. I 
wanted to load up right away, but 
Frank thought we’d better wait until 
to-morrow, so we compromised by snap- 
(Continued on page 174) 
